Amazon Kindle woes, Part 2
My friend, the freelance Kindle tester/expert, is at it again.
When last we read about his exploits, my friend (let’s call him Mr. Kindle) was frustrated by the fact that he was on his third Kindle within a few short months. At least, that third device seems to have done the trick (so far).
Then, there was the music-and-text-at-the-same-time problem. Despite being told by Kindle customer support that he could do so – our intrepid tester couldn’t get his to play music while he was reading from the device. It just wouldn’t work for him.
Undaunted, our hero refused to take “maybe” for an answer.
He asked those who would listen (and a bunch of people who wouldn’t) until he came up with what turns out to be a deceptively simple solution:
“So when last we traded notes electronically, I told you about my Kindle woes.
Remember the part about figuring out a way to play MP3 tunes on the Kindle?
I wanted to be able to listen to Tchaikovsky while reading Tolstoy.
I asked the Kindle support people for help. The first guy said, “Sure, you can do that”, but his solution didn’t really work. And then the second guy, on the overseas help desk, said “I’m sorry Mr. Robert, but you can not play MP3’s on your Kindle.”
Well, that could have been the end of it. Until my cousin heard about the problem. He’s a freshman at Rutgers.
All you need is a CD, iTunes 9.0 and a Kindle.
Here’s the solution:
1. Insert the CD into the disc drive
2. Have your computer “Show songs using iTunes”
3. At the bottom of the iTunes screen, there should be a button labeled “Import Settings…” Click on the button.
4. Make sure that iTunes is using the “mp3 encoder” instead of the “AAC encoder.” This is the important part.
5. Press OK and import the CD
6. When the CD has finished importing, find the songs in your Library.
7. Right click on one of the songs, and select “Show in Explorer” or whatever the Mac equivalent is.
8. Focus will now move to a folder containing the CD you just downloaded.
9. Plug in your Kindle and copy/paste the files into the “music” folder
10. Enjoy!So I did it. And it works. And I have Mozart on my Kindle!
Eine Kleine Kindlemusik.
Now why couldn’t Kindle tech support tell me this?”
Why indeed! This just proves that even questions with simple answers are sometimes way too tough for “experts” at a customer support desk.
For the record, this fix should work with any CD/music software as long as you save your files as MP3’s.
I want to know why Amazon.com wouldn’t include Apple’s super-popular iTunes-standard, AAC-encoded music file support on their devices? Maybe that’s just one of the reasons that Apple decided to take on Amazon’s Kindle with their upcoming iPad device.
Another problem solved. More news as it happens….